Archive for the ‘neoclassics’ tag

Fifty? Try 75, or maybe 100, or 150. It seems every writeup of the London Coach company has a different figure for how many total the company built in the mid-1980s here in the States using plenty of BMC parts and Ford 2.3L four-cylinder engines. About all that any of the various writeups can agree on is that the company built left-hand-drive cars in two versions: taxi and limousine. An example of the latter, this 1986 London Coach Sterling for sale on Hemmings.com reportedly comes from the Merv Griffin estate and appears to have been well cared for since new. From the seller’s description:

This Sterling limo was owned by the late Merv Griffin from the early 1990s until 2007, and is authenticated by a letter from his son, Tony Griffin. It was used for transporting various VIP’s to and from shopping or even the airport. The VIP’s that he would ferry around town to lunches and wherever they wanted to go included Cary Grant, Elizabeth Taylor and numerous trips with President and Mrs. Ronald Reagan. This Sterling is presented in its original white exterior color with original white vinyl texture top with The Beverly Hilton lettering and original gray cloth interior, which includes a minibar cabinet, adjustable reading lights that come down from overhead as well as rear seats that have pushed back to give the passenger extra leg room. The interior also includes two fold-down jump seats, a glass partition with movable cloth drapes for privacy from the back seat, air conditioning, power windows and cigarette lighter on each side with a center arm rest for comfort. The London Sterling is powered by a 2.3L 4-cylinder Ford engine and automatic transmission with cruise control, power steering and brakes that have barely been used, and shows roughly 10,000 original documented miles on the odometer. The Sterling limo rides smoothly and quietly on 16-inch steel wheels wrapped with Firestone wide whitewall tires and custom chrome London Coach hubcaps.

It’s hard not to look at Virgil Exner’s 1966 Duesenberg revival, either in rendering form (above) or in real-life, and come away convinced that Exner – through the Duesenberg – singlehandedly initiated Detroit’s brougham epoch of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Yet, while Exner proved influential in many aspects throughout his career, the story of how Detroit designers became infatuated with neo-classics goes beyond just one car.

On the face of it, crediting Exner seems a sound argument. A number of commenters in our most recent story on the 1966 Duesenberg pointed out how Seventies luxury cars like the Continental Mark III, the Thunderbird, the Pontiac Grand Prix/Chevrolet Monte Carlo, Chrysler Cordoba, AMC Matador, and others (not to mention the Stutz Blackhawk, another Exner design) seemed to take styling cues from the Duesenberg. Peter Grist, in his Exner biography, Virgil Exner: Visioneer, even argued as much, noting that Exner invited some of Detroit’s best and brightest to a showing of the Duesenberg at his Detroit studio shortly after its Indianapolis debut:

One hundred top automotive executives and members of the local press were invited to the showing and reception. When word got around, they had nearly three hundred guests arrive including key design managers from Ford, Chrysler, and General Motors…

The car did have a major influence on some makers, especially Ford. Henry Ford II was one of the visitors to the Exner studio and adored it, so it was no surprise when the Continental Mark III arrived in 1969 looking very much like a 1966 Duesenberg, but it wasn’t just Ford. Ex’s neo-classic look came to dominate Detroit in the seventies, with almost every full-size car featuring a long hood/short deck and sporting formal grilles, opera windows, trunk straps, landau bars and sculpted fenders, including Cadillac’s Eldorado and Chrysler’s Imperial.

Doubtless, the baroque look came to define Detroit’s mid- and full-size cars throughout most of the Seventies. Lincoln seemed to get the most mileage out of it and the designers of the Continental Mark III and Mark IV likely did purloin the upright grille and hidden headlamps of the from the Duesenberg. Where most full-size cars from the 1960s seemed to emphasize box-like looks and aircraft carrier decklids, the equivalent cars of the Seventies focused on more sculptured bodysides and football field-length hoods. Words like landau, brougham, salon, and custom got recycled from the era of Full Classics and coachbuilt cars, oftentimes inaccurately, and Pontiac even appropriated the original Duesenberg’s SJ and SSJ monikers.

But, not to diminish Exner’s exploits, can we really pin all this on him? Just because two cars from different manufacturers shared some design cues – or as much as a design philosophy – doesn’t necessarily mean that one influenced the other. Take, for instance, the (tenuous) link we once drew between Ken Spencer’s Ford Volcano concept and Bob Bourke’s Studebaker Starliner/Starlight coupes. Or, more relevant here, the link between Pontiac’s prow-like and upright grille/bumper combination and Ford’s rather similar grille, both of which have been attributed to Larry Shinoda, Bunkie Knudsen, or both, who jumped ship from GM to Ford in 1968, right at the time both Pontiac and Ford were developing those designs.

Brochure images courtesy OldCarBrochures.org.

We actually see a number of elements of the 1966 Duesenberg that some point to as influential already in use among other manufacturers in 1966 and the years preceding. The Lincoln Continental, for instance, already had used suicide rear doors back to 1961. Formal roofs could be found all over the place in 1966, from Imperial down to Studebaker. Sculptured bodysides made the 1967 Buicks stand out, and hidden headlamps and landau bars appeared on the 1967 Ford Thunderbird, both of which surely were in the works before Exner’s Duesenberg made its first public appearance.

What’s more, we see certain 1966 Duesenberg elements in both the Oldsmobile Toronado and Buick Riviera, which shouldn’t come as much of a surprise. Both cars leaned heavily on the Full Classics – the Toronado from the Cord L-29 and the Riviera from the La Salle – not only for overall inspiration, but for certain details. Indeed, many have noted the 1966 Duesenberg’s front fendertips seem lifted wholecloth from the Riviera, and Exner’s side sculpturing of the 1966 Duesenberg springs from the same attempt to evoke separate fenders as do the bold flares and knife-edge fender tops seen on the Toronado.

It’s also worth pointing out here that the Riviera debuted for the 1963 model year, the same year that Exner and his son came up with the initial revival designs. In fact, as Grist pointed out, the Exners rendered their designs on the behest of Diana Bartley, a writer for Esquire magazine who contacted them “asking where they thought car design was headed, and how did it relate to the latest fashion for older classics from the thirties.” Though Grist doesn’t mention which cars Bartley had in mind, the Riviera – along with a number of Brooks Stevens designs, including his Studebaker Hawk/Lark makeovers and his Excalibur – likely figured into that conversation.

So can we draw a direct line from the 1963 Riviera to Detroit’s brougham period? Not really. Can we blame the baroque excesses of the Seventies on the 1966 Duesenberg revival? Perhaps, in part. But as we’ve seen time and again in automotive history, successes have many fathers and overarching movements tend not to spring up overnight. Rather, these trends incubate and evolve over longer periods of time and the whole story often proves more complex and fascinating than the simple explanations.

A number of honors are doled out to new cars every year. Lists are made, pace cars are selected, and the manufacturers get to herald the selection in their marketing materials for the rest of the model year. For 1986, one award was created in conjunction with the Congressional declaration of the centennial of the automobile (ignoring Marcus, Cugnot, Long and other pre-1886 pioneers), and the “Official Centennial Car” designation, as awarded by the Automotive Hall of Fame, went to the Clenet Series III.

Clenet Coachworks was founded in 1975 by Alain Clenet, who placed an MG Midget body and doors on a Lincoln Continental Mark V chassis and fleshed out the combination in fairly typical neoclassical styling. While Brooks Stevens introduced the concept of the neoclassic with the Excalibur in 1965, the concept incubated for another decade or so, by which time dozens of neoclassics appeared on the market, many of them Volkswagen-based kits. Clenet was one of the handful that offered a complete car, assembled at its factory in Goleta, California. By 1982, the company fell into bankruptcy, leading former employee Alfred DiMora to purchase Clenet, build a new factory in Carpinteria, California, and resume production in 1984. By this time, the original Series I had been discontinued in favor of the larger Series II and Series III models, still based on Lincoln mechanicals. A fuel-injected Ford 302-cu.in. V-8 and four-speed automatic transmission powered the car and its 134-inch wheelbase, but contemporary publicity materials focused less on the Clenet’s mechanical specifications than on celebrity owners of the cars (among them, Sylvester Stallone), its price ($82,500 for a Series III roadster in 1986, compared to about $25,000 for that year’s Continental), and its luxury accoutrements (American walnut dashboard with Danish teakwood accents, Connolly leather upholstery, English wool carpet, automatic temperature control, etched glass vent windows, backlit crystal glass ashtray). According to ClenetCorner.com, the Goleta factory built 36 Series IIIs while the Carpinteria factory built another 15, all convertibles. The subsequent Series IV, which DiMora touted as a less-expensive Clenet, arrived shortly after, but only four are known to have been built, again according to ClenetCorner.com.

In this case, the honor of the “Official Centennial Car” designation didn’t seem to help Clenet very much. DiMora shut down production sometime in 1986 or 1987 and went on to pursue other lofty goals. Clenets, like their contemporary manufactured neoclassics, continue to sell for decent money today, likely thanks to a widespread enthusiast community, but you tell us: Do awards and honors mean much when looking for a collector car? Does this award in particular make you want to put a Clenet in your garage dedicated to vehicles from 1986? And how do neoclassics fit into the broader world of collector cars?

Took a little vacation down Florida way the last several days – a get-outta-the-cold, get-some-sand-under-your-toes trip – and ran across a nice-sized cruise-in at Old Town in Kissimmee. Typical cruise night fare, for the most part – plenty of Chevrolets from the 1950s and 1960s, and plenty of For Sale signs – though I noticed a preponderance of air-cooled Volkswagens, including an odd dune buggy pickup, and at least two neoclassics, a Beaumont and a Zimmer. I know that I shouldn’t judge an entire state’s collector car tastes from one cruise night, so can you Floridians in the audience tell me whether this is typical?

So in the upcoming Captain America movie, Cap will be riding around on a modern disc-brake Harley poorly dolled up to look like a WWII Indian. More intriguing, however, is this car on the same set in England, which looks like it might have started out as one of Virgil Exner’s Esquire neoclassics before prop designers added the non-directional military tires and fake Bentley-type crank-driven supercharger. I’m presuming it’s a villain’s car. (via)